i’ve long adored the word ‘ceremony’. 

this is probably because i adore many things that are experientially  ’ceremonious’. and now that i’m on the subject, i quite like that word too. which naturally, i suppose, culminates on the highest peaks of vocabularian affinity for ‘ceremoniously’ - though, to be fair, i’m unusually biased to many words that are modified by ‘ly’.

i like the way ‘ly’ conjures presence - a something happening. a something happening right now. the way a something is happening right now. it’s like attaching shiny little sparkle shoes onto a word so that it can finally perform the tap routine that it had been stuck choreographing in its own head while confined to straighter laces…

…which i guess is to say its something of a terminological happy hour. a momentary gust of wind in a word’s sails. get a few drinks in it and the next thing you know its teetering around all fancy-free(ly) on the tables. 

“you know clear was up for a big promotion until we met his alter ego, clearly, at the holiday party - clearly had some att-i-tude.”

also, i like the way it makes words seem like they have an endearing, vaguely bumpkin-ish, middle name to which i can attach the most personally entertaining last name that occurs to me in those split seconds (hours, whatever) i devote to pointless games with myself. sharp lee sabertooth. bare lee knowsyourname. 

i didn’t say i’m especially good at this game.  

Nestled within a velveteen sky of infinite stars, there is a small, solitary island. 

It is shaped like a crescent moon, except not quite, with its two points nearly extending all the way around an invisible ring, so very near each other that if one were to gaze upon it from a not so distant horizon, they would not be able to discern that the island isn’t quite crescent shaped at all….instead, it would appear as a delicate, pencil-sketched outline of one side of an unbroken circle….

In the unlikely off-chance you happened upon this island in your sky faring travels - it is, after all, remarkably small and the starscape, after all, truly infinite, on one of the not-quite-crescent points, it is quite possible you would discover a lady, and on the other, it is entirely unlikely that you would discover a gentleman. 

I suppose I’m being a tad misleading. First off, she is not entirely a lady and he not entirely a gentleman - not on account of their manners or behavior (in fact, it is entirely on account of their manners and behavior that I’ve assigned them these imprecise designations) – but rather, because they aren’t exactly human, though I’ll admit to there being at least twelve uncanny resemblances. Additionally, my projections of the possibilities and unlikelihoods about discovering or not discovering them would have once been accurate, but perhaps not so much so anymore.

“Anymore” came to be when a most unusual cosmic event transpired, and time moved forward and yet, somehow, backward in a way that was both accelerated and yet, somehow, paralyzed. 

It is impossible to discern if this event is the fruit of fate or coincidence. And it probably doesn’t matter much either way. 

A more precise account of just what this cosmic event entailed for the island, the lady, and the gentleman is forthcoming….eventually. Until then, kindly forgive me the brusque nature of this abbreviated synopsis:   

If she had a name, for which she has no use, it would be Lady Rainbow, as her eyes are million-faceted prisms into which the light from the three suns, perfectly equidistant apart, would leap and refract all throughout the day, casting rainbows in every direction several miles from any point at which she stood. Her eyes were capable of closing - but only for sleep, never to blink – and her eyelids always fell for sleep as the three suns brushed the cusp of vanishing at the precise moment of  dusk’s true twilight and opened at the precise moment of dawn’s true twilight. Consequently, she knows nothing of the night, though her ignorance not founded upon some intention, nor is it borne of an avoidance or aversion. 

She simply knows nothing of the night. 

While she is a curiously lovely sight to behold, her features in equal part woman, heron, fox, and tiger, and while she’d be delighted to meet you, it is generally advisable that you don’t venture too close. The same crystalline prisms that beam forth rainbows when admired from afar conduct a light so pure and bright that if she were to concentrate her stare upon you from just a little closer, you’d vanish immediately without a trace, burned all the way through in a single instant. Granted, it would happen so quickly that it wouldn’t hurt at all, but it isn’t advisable, nevertheless.

And so, she was entirely alone. Not that she minded, as it had always been that way, and she knew no different or better. Who knows how long she’d been there - maybe forever, maybe 7 seconds. As you know, time is irrelevant in the starsea, as are questions of mortality. 

Well what of the gentleman, then? How could any creature be alone on an island where there are precisely two inhabitants? 

If he had a name, for which he has no use, it would be Sir Dark Sparkle, and he does indeed live on the very proximate not-quite-crescent point just across a small starsea channel across from the lady. 

It was entirely on account of the uncommon constitution of Sir Dark Sparkle’s eyes that the inhabitants knew not of each other, though we may speculate this might be the result of some adaptive evolutionary force working simultaneously to ensure their continuing existence, but rendering that continuing existence contingent on their respective solitude.